Sunday parking meter plan decried, defended

San Francisco’s transportation chief defended his plan to start charging at curbside meters on Sundays in the face of concerns raised by city supervisors and criticism by local pastors.

Ed Reiskin, top executive of the deficit-plagued San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, said Thursday that the plan to extend meter operations to seven days a week is driven both by the need to generate more revenue — adding Sundays to the enforcement schedule is expected to raise an estimated $1.9 million extra a year in meter revenue — and to create turnover downtown and in the neighborhood commercial districts where drivers now can park all day without fear of a ticket that carries a minimum fine of $55.

Supervisor Scott Wiener said he understands the policy reasons but is still troubled by the prospect.

“I’m not a fan of the Sunday meters… It is something that has a lot of impacts on a lot of people throughout the city,” he said during a hearing on the transportation agency’s budget before the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee.

Supervisors Malia Cohen and Carmen Chu who serve on the committee with Wiener also said they were uneasy with the prospect of Sunday meters operations.

Now, meters only are in operation on Sundays in San Francisco on port-owned property along the Embarcadero and in Fisherman’s Wharf. Under the proposal, meter enforcement on Sundays in all other parts of the city would not begin until noon, a timing compromise made by the agency in deference to churches that hold services on Sunday.

But that’s not good enough for many church leaders — led by black ministers — who have been lobbying hard to stop the plan altogether. Among those who spoke out were the Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Church, the Rev. Amos Brown, president of the local NAACP chapter, and the Rev. Robert Lucas, who serves as president of the San Francisco Baptist Ministers Council.

“You look at the impact on the communities involved and the ill feeling that’s going to be created, I think the value is going to come out as a loss,” Lucas said.

Wiener said criticism isn’t just coming from the religious community. Plenty of small business owners are upset, too, he said. But Reiskin and his staff said they also have heard from merchants and restaurateurs who would welcome greater parking turnover near their businesses on Sundays.

Officially, the only way supervisors can block the plan is if they reject the agency’s entire two-year budget proposal, which amounts to $821 million in the new fiscal year that starts July 1 and $845.5 million the year after that.

While the supervisors on the budget committee made no threats that they would try to do that, they did strongly suggest that Reiskin rethink the plan as the budget moves through the approval process.

“I hear you,” Reiskin told the supervisors, but also showed no sign that he was going to budge. The agency’s board of directors, appointed by the mayor, already has endorsed the plan.

“I get it and don’t want to underestimate at all that changing (the Sunday meter policy) and beginning to manage something that we haven’t been before, beginning to charge for something that had been free before, is going to be very disruptive and is not going to be something that a lot of people welcome, and I fully acknowledge that,” Reiskin said. But, he added, “I do believe that it’s supported by good policy.”

Supervisors will continue public debate on the meter proposal next month.